الفهرس 
Setting as Protagonist in Thomas Hardy’s Fiction: A Theoretical BackgroundOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is considered as one of the most important English novelists, short story writers and poets of the Naturalist movement of the Victorian age. Many critics see him as a transitional writer whose art echoes the tradition of nineteenth-century fiction and paves the way for the advance of Modernism. This thesis aims at studying and analyzing setting as protagonist in Thomas Hardy’s novels: The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles(1891). The fact that Thomas Hardy’s setting is the central and most dominant narrative element in his fiction, and that all the other elements are shaped and coloured by Hardy’s own vision of the setting, has stimulated the writer of this thesis to make a study and analysis of the centrality of the setting in his novels, particularly that this is a point that has not been dealt with or investigated before, though some critics have felt it and alluded to it in bits and pieces, but no thorough or detailed study has ever been made of it before.
The writer of this thesis deals with Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. These three novels have been regarded by critics as being among the most outstanding and popular of the works of Thomas Hardy. Also, these specific three novels can be used to reveal and investigate setting as protagonist in Hardy’s fiction.
A theoretical background of the topic of the study is presented in the First Chapter to give the reader background information about Thomas Hardy and the different variables that have affected him both as a writer and as a human being, and that have shaped his vision of the setting.
The other chapters trace the major role played by the setting in shaping the whole narrative experience and vision of Hardy in The Return
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of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Chapter two investigates the effect of the setting on the structure of the plot and the development of the course of events in a sample of important extracts from the three concerned novels.
Chapter Three presents an analysis of some extracts in which the main characters of the three novels are involved, to prove the great influence of the setting on the presentation of the characters and their development in these novels.
Chapter Four investigates the effect of the setting on the style and language in the three novels. A sample of passages, conversations and expressions is selected for the study and analysis to prove that the particular nature of the setting dictates the style of what is narrated in these novels.
The analysis of the extracts selected in the whole thesis has resulted in the general finding that the setting is the central and most dominant narrative element in Hardy’s fiction. It is the real protagonist in The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Key Words:
1- Setting.
2- Protagonist.
3- Plot.
4- characterization.
5- Style.